12 Best Movies Based on Books

Check out WD's picks for films that made literary classics come alive

As August 13 approaches, fans of the bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love eagerly await the book's movie adaptation. But will it live up to the hype? Every literary-movie buff knows that staying true to the plot devices and characters in a novel is often the key to a great cinematic derivative. In honor of the films that got it right, WD chose our 12 favorite book-to-movie masterpieces. From The Unbearable Lightness of Being to The English Patient, here are the flicks that brought the best of what's in the book to the silver screen.

To Kill a Mockingbird

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One of the greatest books in American literature, Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, explores racism and civil rights in the 1930s American South. Told through the eyes of Scout Finch, a precocious 8-year-old, the story follows her father, Atticus Finch, an attorney who is desperately trying to prove the innocence of a black man on trial who is unjustly accused of raping a white woman. Crafting a movie after such a landmark book was surely no simple feat, but this 1962 adaptation with Gregory Peck made it look easy. With an excellent sense of pacing and character development, it's no wonder the film picked up three Oscars, for Best Actor, Best Art Direction and Best Screenplay. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

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Author extraordinaire Roald Dahl is famed for his 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But Gene Wilder's zany depiction of the title character of the 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory stole the show. After years of seclusion, Wonka decides to hide five golden tickets in candy bar wrappers. Whoever finds them—which turns out to be several nasty little children, except the poverty-stricken Charlie, of course—gets a tour of his factory, after which one child will win a lifetime supply of chocolate. Filled with memorable songs and unforgettably costumed Oompa-Loompas, the movie brought to life things the reader could've hardly imagined. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

The Godfather

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The Godfather was originally a 1969 book by Mario Puzo—a fact that might surprise modern-day audiences, many of whom could never imagine any other version than the 1972 film by Francis Ford Coppola. With Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone and Al Pacino as his son Michael Corleone, the film provided a visually gruesome but riveting look at mafia life in 1940s and '50s New York. It's now 38 years later, and the Brando-Corleone impersonations haven't petered out one bit. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Stand by Me

Author Stephen King is known for his ability to scare the wits out of readers with horror stories, but it's his character-driven pieces that have given us the most pause. For example: his 1981 novella, The Body, which tells the story of four young boys venturing into the woods to find a missing body. In 1986, young actors River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton and Jerry O'Connell took on the story in the adaptation Stand by Me. The result was anything but frightful; rather, the tale became a nuanced look at the process of boys coming of age. Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

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The Princess Bride

Author William Goldman wrote the 1973 novel The Princess Bride about Princess Buttercup and Westley, her one true love. The fantasy-filled story, packed with adventure, intrigue and romance, was recreated onscreen in 1987 by movie legend Rob Reiner. Although Robin Wright (Buttercup) and Cary Elwes (Westley) were terrific, the real treat was watching the star-studded supporting cast—including Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest and Mandy Patinkin—amp up the laughs, ultimately creating a timeless cinematic classic. Photo courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the story of Czech brain surgeon Tomas in 1960s Communist Czechoslovakia. Tomas meets and marries Tereza, a bookish country girl, but continues an affair with his lover Sabina. Although the film released in 1988 departs from the original in some ways, the chemistry between Daniel Day-Lewis (Tomas), Juliette Binoche (Tereza) and Lena Olin (Sabina) is electric. Romantic, erotic, philosophical and complex, the movie only illuminates the beauty of Kundera's brilliant prose through the equally brilliant acting of its talented cast. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Field of Dreams

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The 1982 book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella was a heartwarming tale of big Americana proportions. The movie? Even better, given its hopeful take on the field's uncanny and eerie happenings. Like the book, the 1989 Oscar-nominated film starring Kevin Costner tells the mythical story of Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer who hears a God-like voice urging him to build a baseball field in order to bring back disgraced early-1900s baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. Once the field is built, Joe does appear, allowing for some true movie magic to take over. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Fried Green Tomatoes

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Many people who saw the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes, starring Kathy Bates, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker and Jessica Tandy, didn't even know it was based on the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. The story takes place in the 1980s, when Evelyn (Bates), an overweight, unhappy housewife, befriends the elderly Ninny Threadgoode (Tandy), who tells her the story of two unlikely best friends living in 1930s Alabama. Full of zip and Southern sass, the film never shied away from these resilient women—despite their treacherous deeds. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.

The Joy Luck Club

In her 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells the story of four first-generation Chinese-American women and their relationships with their own mothers, whose lives in China before their births they know very little about. We admired how the 1993 film brought these stories to life in visceral detail and inspired audiences with the strength of these four mothers who endured difficult times as younger women. Ultimately, seeing this tale on screen helped explain the complicated relationships mothers and daughters share, regardless of where they are from. Photo courtesy of Hollywood Pictures.

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The Shawshank Redemption

Another example of Stephen King's dramatic mastery is his 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which tells the harrowing story of Andy Dufresne, an accountant falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover. The 1994 Oscar-nominated rendition starred Tim Robbins as Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as his prison buddy, "Red." The on-screen chemistry of this duo was unstoppable, causing viewers to root for them as they face the dreary reality of prison injustices. Photo courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment.

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The English Patient

The 1993 novel The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje, tells the story of four people who find themselves living together in an abandoned Italian villa during the final weeks of World War II. While the book focuses equally on all four characters, the 1996 film starring Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche pays more attention to the tragic love story between Count Laszlo de Almásy (Fiennes), a Hungarian mapmaker, and Katharine Clifton (Thomas), a wealthy Englishwoman. We loved the on-screen tension as the two fall into a passionate love affair, which leads to tragedy and loss for both. Photo courtesy of Miramax Films.

The Devil Wears Prada

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Lauren Weisberger's 2003 roman à clef tells the story of idealistic college graduate Andy Sachs, who moves to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a writer at an esteemed publication. But then reality hits, and after dozens of failed job applications and interviews, she ends up at Runway, working as the second assistant to the fashion magazine's icy, larger-than-life editor-in-chief. In one of the few instances where less is more, the 2006 movie streamlined the book and added some much-needed humor by focusing on what mattered most: the insane antics of her boss, Miranda Priestly, played to perfection by the always-impeccable Meryl Streep. Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

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